I’ve received more than the usual inquiries about this book, which I first heard about in September from one of my friendly skeptical correspondents, and which I acquired in November. As most know by now, The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark is being hailed by some skeptics as the book that will destroy orthodox Christianity, and it is being proudly referred to by a number of them.

Apparently they’ve forgotten that we’ve been through this before.

I am planning a series of articles on this book in the spring, but for now, let’s lay out the basics in question and answer format:

• What’s the book about? Distilled to essence: The Gospel of Mark shows literary affinities, and affinities in terms of plotlines, to the Homeric epics, especially the Odyssey (part 2 of the set, after part 1, the Iliad).
• What’s the big fuss? Apparently these skeptics are thinking that in showing these parallels, MacDonald has (after the manner of Randel Helms) proven that Mark is full of “gospel fictions.” MacDonald himself is far from blatant in making such assertions; indeed, he very seldom touches upon the question of actual historicity: where he does, he sometimes indicates that there may be real history told in Mark (this in spite of the parallels), but sometimes implies that Mark made something up out of whole cloth. Most of the time, though, he says nothing explicitly about this either way.
• What does this work actually prove? The answer is, very little. MacDonald makes an excellent case for literary relationships between Mark and Homer in a few cases -- if I must estimate, I would say no more than 30% of the parallels he draws might have any actual validity, and then only in the sense of a literary (vs. history-making) connection. The remaining 70% or so consists of MacDonald’s imagination getting rather overactive, and/or not answering the key question, “Yes, but is what Mark describes historically plausible?” Skeptics seem to have developed this automatic reaction that parallel = fiction, but as with Helms, there is a hidden, assumed premise: That there is no way certain parallels could have been arrived at by means of actual historical events. So: Luke's story of Eutychus falling out a window has affinities to one of Homer's episodes from the Odyssey where someone falls off a roof -- so what? Don't people fall off of roofs, balconies, out of windows, etc. in real life? Are all those stories that come out of Daytona every spring break fictional imitations of one original "guy who fell off a balcony" archaetype? (To those preparing to criticize the analogy: That there is a high concentration in Daytona of hotel balconies and immature persons, is more than counter-balanced by the geographical consideration of the entire Greek and Roman empires over several hundred years, and the lack of relevant safety codes.) As I have noted before, if this is so, then using the same criteria 2000 years from now, my fictional Phonias J. Futz character could argue that the life of Kennedy is a fictional reworking of the life of Lincoln (especially given the numerous, very specific parallels between their deaths -- everyone remember that list that includes such coincidences as "Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and hid in a warehouse; Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and hid in a theater"? -- and their general concerns as Presidents as well).

  In some cases, the proof for MacDonald consists in writing his own descriptions of events in Mark and Homer, and making his descriptions as similar as possible - whereas the actual stories contain differences that he either passes over or minimizes. In several cases, historical plausibility in Mark is dismissed with a wave, or even erroneously (for example, the Sea of Galilee has its meteorological profile reduced; I have already found an item from a meteorological periodical that debunks MacDonald’s contentions). In some places the best answer is, “So what?” -- for example, that Mark’s blind man at Jericho story seems to allude to Tiresias means no more than that any story about blind people today might contain intentional (or even unwitting!) allusions to Ray Charles - say “blind man” and the image of the latter is sure to come to mind; so likewise, undoubtedly, with Tiresias in the first century. The key question, never answered, is whether the parallels are sufficiently uncanny to suggest that what Mark describes is therefore implausible as actual history.

• Finally, I will work this out in more detail in my essays, but whereas MacDonald asserts simply that he thinks his thesis supports Markan priority, I think he has actually made a much better case for Matthean priority (or, priority of an oral tradition which Matthew follows more closely).